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They’re calling it a ringing success.
A majority of New York teachers reported huge classroom improvements after the state’s first phone-free school year — thanks to better student focus, less bullying and more kids just being kids.
About 600 public school teachers were polled and 76% of them gave high marks to the no-cellphone policy implemented in September, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Monday during a roundtable at Brooklyn’s PS 383 Middle School.
The educators reported a noticeable improvement in student behavior and said they were more engaged in discussions and collaborated better with one another.
“They’re participating in class discussions, and teachers can finally teach,” Hochul told reporters Monday while discussing the the responses. “We have finally kids talking to each other.”
Hochul was one of the leading proponents of the measure, which affected the nearly 1 million K-12 kids in the state’s public and charter schools by requiring them to place their phones in monitored bins, lockers or secured bags at the start of each school day.
Albany touted the measure — passed in May 2025 — as “one of the nation’s strongest phone-free policies,” and said it came largely from student pleas for freedom from the social pressures phones put on them during the day.
“‘You have to save us from ourselves,'” Hochul said one student told her. “I realized it was this addictive device that held their attention throughout the day, kept them engaged with it and disengaged from the teachers.”
And the kids themselves also benefitted from the ban outside of the classroom, teachers said, with 60% describing a notable decline in bullying incidents.
Another 80% of teachers said basic social connections between students had improved.
“They are reacting like kids again, feeling that burden lifted from their shoulders,” Hochul said.
Some students even agreed with their teachers’ assessments.
“I noticed a lot of kids talking with each other more, more engaged in conversation,” said one student, Julia, who joined Hochul’s roundtable. “A lot of kids playing sports with each other and doing interactive activities.”
Around 75% of educators said their ability to teach had been enhanced, too.
Some 47% of teacher responses came from New York City, while 53% came from the rest of the state.
Hochul did not provide test scores to bolster the teacher accounts of improvements, but said it “makes sense” that positive results would begin to show within a few years — if not when this year’s come back by the end of June.
“I feel very optimistic that we will see some improvement,” Hochul said. “But the main focus of this has always been their emotional development and trying to combat such negativity that they’re enveloped with throughout the school day.”
English (US)